LinkedIn stops its Intro email service

LinkedIn is closing Intro, an email service that integrates the iOS mail app with LinkedIn. As a result, LinkedIn contact details were shown in e-mails. Intro was only introduced three and a half months ago.

On March 7, Intro will be permanently disconnected, LinkedIn has announced. The business networking site writes that it wants to focus and concentrate more on a limited number of investments in the long term. However, the fact that Intro already received a death sentence three and a half months after its introduction may also indicate that the service was simply not a success.

Intro showed LinkedIn users information about contacts in the iOS mail app, if they had a LinkedIn profile. Since iOS does not allow to change the mail app, the service was offered in the form of a profile that had to be installed on the device. As a result, all mail was routed through the LinkedIn servers, with the LinkedIn integration being added to the email as an HTML element. Security researchers pointed to the privacy risks that this entailed; in effect, the service amounted to a man-in-the-middle attack, they found.

LinkedIn also stops Slidecast, a service that allowed users to upload Slideshare presentations with audio. Also, support for the iPad app for iOS versions older than 6.0 will be discontinued.